It would be fair to call Jean-Charles de Ravenel a throwback. His medium is collage, a practice whose heyday came in the era of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. His sources are engravings and photographs—the analog, shot-on-film kind—culled from such distant times and places as 19th-century Russia and Palm Beach in the ’30s.
Before turning to collage, de Ravenel, who was featured in a Ralph Lauren Collection campaign a few years back, cut his teeth in the antiques world by working at the Hôtel Drouot auction house followed by 20 years running a successful antiques shop on the Rue Jacob in Paris, where he was born. “To discover objects or pieces of furniture or documents,” de Ravenel says, “that’s a passion that never really abandoned me.”
It was the discovery of a trove of 18th-century hand-colored engravings of the wives of Romanov tsars that led him on an adventure of collecting documents from that time: an invitation card to an embassy in 1910 here, an original telegram sent by the Grand Duke there. What results from this expansive tour of history is the artist’s enigmatic, compelling work in collage, as well as a restoration of the past. Since de Ravenel insists on using only original documents, there’s a chance that many wouldn’t have been seen again—having been confined to the collector’s drawers or dustbin. “It’s a way of making these things live again,” he says.
Often, the objects he comes across stir faint memories of his childhood. In researching Palm Beach for an exhibit a couple of years ago, he returned to photo albums of the south of France his grandparents had kept during the early 20th century. Just as often, his research uncovers unexpected connections. While researching Mrs. Mona Harrison Williams—a Louisville, Kentucky, debutante who was for a time the wife of one of the wealthiest men in America; she was painted by Salvador Dalí and was a Palm Beach fixture—de Ravenel came across a line in Cole Porter’s 1936 song “Ridin’ High”: “What do I care if Mrs. Harrison Williams is the best-dressed woman in town?” So he began research on Porter. “It all goes together,” he says. “Remember, I used to be an antiques dealer. Part of the fun of it is to look for the things.”
His process involves experimenting with different compositions while working at a large table in his studio. “There has to be a certain rhythm in the form,” de Ravenel says. “Not so much in the shape of each item I’m doing the collage with, but the way they seem to answer one another. For me it’s a bit like music.” As he works, he is surrounded by mementos, things that remind him of other places and people. “I have many faults, and one of them is that I like clutter,” he says, laughing. “I like to live surrounded by things. If you give me an empty room, it will fill up very fast. It’s an organized clutter.”
- Courtesy of Jean-Charles du Ravenel
- © Ralph Lauren Corporation
- Courtesy of Jean-Charles du Ravenel
